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Poem of the week
I keep writing my mother into kitchens
as if I cannot imagine her another way,
cake cooling on counter, knife on table,
the disturbance of us in the background.
A life in dollhouse proportions –
a stove, a child, four walls pressing in on her,
never the sharp turn of her head,
never her dark and restless silences.
Maybe this is how I want her preserved,
bending over ovens, crooning to the radio,
a careful sketch contained by the page.
How can I write the word mother
and not reduce her to the idea of one?
Like berries cooked down to a sweet jam
after all their wild and irresistible living.
